Player and League Stand at a Frontier

Jason Collins (98) is a 12-year veteran of six N.B.A. teams. Collins, 34, began this season with Boston but was sent to Washington in February.Credit
Jim Young/Reuters

Like it or not, fair or not, the N.B.A. is under the microscope now, or once again, this time as a test case in how a major sports league responds to an active player declaring he is gay.

If Jason Collins, whose first-person coming-out story appeared Monday on the Web site of Sports Illustrated, were 25 and averaging 25 points, the impact would be greater, but the path forward would be simpler. Talent and leverage would push the narrative and help it surmount obstacles predictable and unforeseen.

Collins, however, is 34, a 12-year veteran of six N.B.A. teams, and one who has not averaged more than 2 points or rebounds in years. He began this season with Boston but was sent to Washington at the league’s trade deadline in February.

Although 7-foot centers often have staying power — the Celtics, in fact, could right now use Collins’s ability to occupy space in the lane against the Knicks — he has for a while been a marginal player who could be deemed dispensable by any or all teams anytime.

His career clock now becomes trickier to read, in part a reflection of how enlightened the sports world is beyond platitudes and pleasantries, how ready the N.B.A. and by extension the mainstream sports culture really is for an openly gay male in its locker rooms.

Collins made it clear in his Sports Illustrated article that he had no plans to retire. That unquestionably places the burden on the league to not only avoid the antipathy it would encounter if Collins was not to have a job next season, but to allow him to play under the banner of perceived social progress.

“I do think it’s important for him to be in the league as a visible symbol,” said Richard Lapchick, a human rights activist and longtime sports industry watchdog. “If he makes this courageous stand but then disappears from the locker room, it would not do it justice.”

In the N.B.A. fraternity, Collins has been one of the more likable players, so, not surprisingly, many players — like Kobe Bryant and Tony Parker — took to Twitter on Monday to voice their support. In a telephone interview, Commissioner David Stern said that Collins had told him that he had spoken with several top players and was heartened by their responses.

In a statement released by the league, Stern said it was proud that Collins has “assumed the leadership mantle on this very important issue.” To the direct question of whether Stern might have to wield his power to make sure that Collins is on somebody’s opening-night roster next season, he scoffed.

“Our mode of operation for years has been based on basketball-related decisions,” he said, adding that story would be a news media frenzy for a few days but business-as-usual by next season, assuming Collins has a role in it.

Photo

Jason Collins, right, against the Spurs’ David Robinson in the 2003 N.B.A. Finals.Credit
G. Paul Burnett/The New York Times

According to Lapchick, whose report cards on hiring practices in the sports industry have been widely cited, the N.B.A. has been and remains the leader on racial and gender inclusion in hiring.

Perhaps more than anything, Stern is proud of his league’s record. When Bryant Gumbel of HBO likened him to “some kind of modern plantation overseer” for locking out his players last season, he said: “I have worked harder for inclusiveness and diversity than he could ever understand. So when I heard what he said, I sat back and waited for the e-mails from the people who know me, who have worked with me.”

And yet professional basketball, back to its infancy, was no racial precedent-setter; the N.B.A. lagged three years behind baseball in integrating its first African-American players. Well into the 1980s, black players quietly complained that white players were sought for front office and coaching jobs at much higher rates.

When Magic Johnson decided to return to the league in 1992 after contracting H.I.V. and sitting out a season, his announcement was greeted cheerfully. But the public face was partly superficial, masking fears and underlying tensions that were bared by Karl Malone in a 1992 interview with The New York Times.

In ensuing years, Malone expressed some regret for saying players were worried about contracting the virus because of the cuts and scabs that were part of a physical game. Malone later said he was young and not informed enough by his cultural environment or the league, which was dealing with a medical phenomenon it had no time to prepare for.

This case is different, Stern said, listing several league initiatives designed to raise awareness in recent years among its players along with “the direction of the national debate, to where we think this will be a nonissue.”

But if the Johnson saga has taught the league anything, it should be that players will often say what they believe the public prefers to hear.

Some no doubt come from backgrounds where they have been influenced by different opinions from what the league chooses to collectively espouse. Others may be steeped in the religious belief that homosexuality, as the ESPN basketball reporter Chris Broussard said Monday on a broadcast, amounts to “walking in open rebellion to God.”

Many N.B.A. players attend pregame chapel. Golden State is coached by Mark Jackson, a pastor with his own ministry. Several players have gone there to pray with him. That, alone, obviously doesn’t foretell intolerance.

It does remind us that an entity as diverse as the N.B.A. guarantees diversity of thought, or no standard response to a story like the one Collins has bravely told. There are still new chapters to write, but only if Collins and anyone who follows continue to compete.

His next contract will be a sign of the times.

A version of this article appears in print on April 30, 2013, on page B10 of the New York edition with the headline: A Player and a League At a Frontier. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe